Recession affects sales of Fairtrade products

Fairtrade’s explosive growth slowed in the UK last year as shoppers thought twice about buying costlier ethical products in the recession, figures released today show.

Overall Fairtrade sales rose by 12 per cent to an estimated £799m, with tea and coffee performing well but cotton fading, the Fairtrade Foundation said.

The rise represents a marked slowdown in the runaway growth of the trade-not-aid movement, following sales leaps of 71 per cent in 2007 and 45 per cent in 2008.

During 2009 several companies announced they would move some lines exclusively to Fairtrade lines: Starbucks switched all its espresso-based coffees to Fairtrade while Cadbury converted its best-selling Dairy Milk range.

Barbara Crowther, communications director of the Fairtrade Foundation, said: “We have had really dramatic increases [in past years] and people said that we could not continue forver and given the economic climate we are very proud we have achieved double-digit growth.”

Fairtrade pays farmers higher prices for their products than they would receive on the world market as well a social premium to local co-operatives to improve their communities.

As the sales figures were released at the start of Fairtrade Fortnight, the organisation warned that the global recession had been “incredibly tough” for producers in the developing world, where an estimated 50-90 million more people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2009.

“Last year was a tough year for everyone, but a desperate year for many poor communities and small farmers in developing countries,” said Harriet Lamb, chief executive of the Fairtrade Foundation.

“It is to the credit of the decent British and Irish public that they do care and, despite the recession, they are still voting with their wallets for fairness and want to change the indignities of an unjust trading system.”

A YouGov survey for the organisation found that 7 in 10 people had cut back on their personal budgets in some way as a result of the recession. 71 per cent of people said they were willing to swap one or more products to Fairtrade in the next two weeks.

Last week Ben & Jerry’s ice cream announced it would switch all ingredients worldwide to Fairtrade by 2013.